


The Princess of Always

by wargoddess



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-26
Updated: 2011-04-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 16:34:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/190937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kairi couldn't wait forever for her two Keyblade knights, but they still came back for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Princess of Always

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this after the first game, many years ago (can't remember how long); acknowledges no continuity after that, sorry. This was also originally posted on a Kingdom Hearts fanfic ML, so if it seems familiar -- congrats, you've got a great memory!

Once upon a time, a princess lived in an exotic land. The land was not her own; she had come from a magnificent world of mountains and castles where people travelled in delicate elevators drawn by light. But the lord of that land, her father, had gone mad, so the princess went to live in a simpler place where she might be safe.

And there she had met two boys. Her would-be knights; her friends and companions. They had been strong together, the three of them. A trinity. The boys had been close before her arrival, and she had tried her best not to come between them. In the end, she had anyhow... but they faced down ten thousand nightmares for her, and in the end became close once more.

If it had ended there, the fairytale would have been complete. The boys had become her knights in truth, as she had become a princess in truth, and everyone knows that the princess marries the brave knight who fights for her. Choosing between them might've been difficult---though she liked one more than the other---but they would have worked something out.

But something went wrong. After many trials, the princess ended up alone back in the exotic land, and her two knights vanished. She knew they were alive somewhere out there, fighting countless unimaginable battles to make the universe safe for her. But when ten years years passed, then fifteen, the princess began to doubt that her knights would ever return. It seemed as though she would spend the rest of her days in loneliness, yearning for companionship and children and all of the other things that were supposed to come with "happily ever after." So she wept over it, and spent many sleepless nights, but finally decided that her knights would never return and it was time to move on with her life. All fairytales must end sometime.

So she married a gentle man of the island, and together they had a daughter. And if she did not love her island man as much as she probably should have, that was all right. He understood, and accepted the love she gave him, and for the most part she was happy.

And then Kairi's knights returned.

***

They appeared like gods---or demons---in the village square just after noon. First the sky darkened, and then a great bolt of lightning had torn through the clouds and smashed into the ground, sending tendrils crackling over all the buildings and trees. When the light faded they were there, standing face to face, palm to palm, like dark-and-light mirror images of one another. One was taller, brown-haired and brawny, wearing close-fitting armor of an off-white color, its cloth surface embroidered with foreign designs. She recognized him first although he was much older and his hair streamed down his back in a shaggy mane. The other was short and compact, his clothing more stark: a heavy cloak and hood of unembellished black, a black sleeveless shirt and pants underneath. Both wore strange-looking swords: the light one carried a single elaborate blade on one hip, and the dark one bore two, strapped in a criss-cross on his back.

The villagers had been terrified. It had been left to Kairi to go down and greet them, which was just as well. It got the painful part over with quickly. They had both hugged her at the same time, their arms tight and comforting around her, and in that instant she remembered why she'd loved them so much and how much she'd missed them. But then the spell shattered when her daughter began to cry and wonder aloud why her mommy was hugging the two scary men, and her husband shushed the child and said, "They're her friends, honey. They've come back for a visit." And that of course had told them everything.

Now they stood awkwardly in her kitchen, barely contained by its cramped space. In the square they had both radiated auras of such power, such magnificence, that fleetingly she wondered if the walls of her house would warp from the difficulty of accommodating such force. But for the moment all they radiated was pain overlaid by a superficial friendliness that none of them really believed. Perhaps that diminished their power.

"Wow." The warrior of light said this with a weak little chuckle. It was the fifth time he'd said it in the past half-hour. He sat at her table, a cup of tea untasted in his hands; he stared down into it as if trying to read the leaves. "I guess it just didn't seem like that much time had passed."

"It's been twenty years," Kairi said softly. "I tried to wait, but everyone... everyone was telling me that it was time to move on. That I couldn't wait forever. That I was wasting my life, waiting..."

A very soft, bitter sound from the dark warrior, who stood at her window with his back to them. He'd said nothing from the moment they'd seen her husband and daughter; he let the other warrior do his talking. She did not remember him ever having been so silent back in their youth... but perhaps it was only that there was so little to say.

_They have fought their way across countless worlds for me, and I thought it was a waste of time to wait for them._

"I can never say 'I'm sorry' enough," she whispered, looking down at her own tea. "I can't even begin to try."

"And you shouldn't," the light one said. She could not think of him as "Sora." Nor could she call the brooding creature near the window "Riku." Those names belonged to memories from her childhood---bright-eyed, boisterious boys whose idea of love had been sharing a fruit. Not these men with their quiet power and visible pain.

"Being sorry means regretting your family, and that wouldn't be right," the light one continued. "Are you happy with them, Kairi? In the end, that's all that matters."

It wasn't, but it was kind of him to say so. She smiled and fought back tears. "I am." _I was._

"Then that's enough." He smiled, still awkwardly. "That's all we needed to hear."

She glanced at the dark one, wondering if he felt the same. But he did not look at her. He did not need to, his stance radiating betrayal.

Or perhaps his stance radiated nothing, and she saw only what her shame led her to see.

She groped for something else to say, aware of the absolute inadequacy of any words to convey what she felt. She was desperately relieved when the light one reached across the table and put a hand on hers.

"Teleporting between worlds takes a lot out of us," he said. "We'll need to rest before we can do it again. I think it'd be awkward for either of us to go to our parents' houses. Can we stay here for the night? I'd forgotten how small this place is; there's no inn here."

"Do it again?" Her mind latched onto those three words and only slowly assimilated the rest. "But you just got here..."

But even as she said it, she understood. They had come back for her, nothing more. Now they had no reason to stay.

The light one sighed and took his hand away. "Well... we have friends to visit on other worlds... we've got to check on some places and make sure the Heartless are gone... you understand..."

"Yes, yes. I'm sorry. I should've realized." She took a deep breath and plastered on a smile, pushing her chair back. "The guest room is upstairs. You'll have to share it, I'm afraid."

"That's all right," he replied, rising to his feet. "We've travelled together for a long time now. We're used to it."

"Okay then, through here." She opened the kitchen door and held it for them. The house was empty; she suspected her husband had taken her daughter to the mayor's house for a visit, to give her time to settle her affairs with these two. That was the sort of consideration and selflessness that had made her marry him.

 _That, and the fact that I knew he would always be there for me._ She could not quite manage to feel guilty for that thought.

The light one moved past her, looking around and muttering pleasantries about how nice her house was. The dark one passed and merely looked at her, his eyes sharp as emeralds and just as unreadable. A faint shiver passed down her spine as she met his eyes---when had he become so pale? Why did he never smile? But then he passed, and the chill went with him.

She decided to appear casual. "The guest room is right upstairs on the left," she told them, pointing toward the winding stairs nearby. "I'll be up in a moment with towels and things."

She turned to a closet and began rummaging in it, exhaling in private relief as footsteps moved up the stairs behind her. When she turned, she nearly jumped and dropped the towels, for the light one stood there, silently watching her.

"S-Sora..." she managed his name with difficulty; it still felt wrong. "What is it? Do you need something else?"

"You shouldn't be afraid of him," he said, and something in his expression told her he'd seen her reaction and was disappointed by it. "He was alone for a long time before I found him again, but he's still the same Riku we've always known. It's just that he's been mind-fucked and tortured and generally put through hell, and... well, darkness takes its toll on a man." He smiled a little sadly. "One of us had to bear the burden, and fortunately for all of us he's more than strong enough. I just help him out once in a while."

She frowned, clutching the towels to her breast. "I don't understand."

"It had to be both of us," he said, patiently. "One light and one dark, because the heart has both within it. One to heal worlds, and another to heal the people who inhabit those worlds. Not enemies, and not good and evil. Just two halves of a whole." He took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. "I suppose it was always meant to be just the two of us. I just hoped... well. Never mind."

He turned then and headed toward the stairs. Kairi watched him go up, wondering which of her guests unnerved her more.

She made herself go up to give them the toiletries and some refreshments and to show them where the bathroom was. The dark one stood at the window again, and she suffered a fleeting memory of him doing the same thing on the beach as a youth. She had seen him spend hours at the water's edge on some days, the hunger to leave an almost palpable aura about him...

She blinked, and the memory was gone.

The light one accepted her offerings with gentle thanks, but did not invite her to stay and chat. She left the room and closed the door behind her, and stood there for several moments wishing her heart would stop aching.

From behind her, though the door, she heard the light one speak, and a softer, deeper murmur in reply. It jarred her for a moment; they hadn't spoken to each other at all since their arrival, only to her. _But of course they must speak to each other all the time. They've been together for years..._

Years. It had been different when they were all children. Riku and Sora had been friends before she arrived, sharing small-boyish secrets, nothing major. Now they were men who shared a destiny greater than anyone could ever have imagined. What had they been through together? How had they changed as a result?

 _I've lost all right to know the answers to those questions,_ she thought bleakly.

But she wanted to know anyway.

Silently she turned away and went down the hall. In the master bedroom was the ladder that led up to the attic, and in the attic floor was a knothole right above the guest bedroom. Her daughter had discovered it when they were cleaning once. If she went up there, she'd be able to see and hear them---

No. They were her friends. Once upon a time, she had loved them above all else. How could she spy on them? It wasn't right.

And yet...

She paused with her hand on the bedroom doorknob, turning it slowly, wrestling with herself.

_When they leave, I'll lose them. They'll never come back here. They have no reason to, anymore._

She had spent twenty years clinging to the memory of two earnest young boys whose love for her had been as sweet as it was humbling. She had grown up since then, discovered adult love and its bittersweet power, and over time their love had come to seem like mere infatuation in her memory. Children's love, not strong enough to bear the everyday realities of parenthood and taxes and grocery shopping.

_And yet it brought them back to me after all this time. And yet it's shaped the men they've become, and perhaps all the worlds they've healed together._

She needed to know these men, to put to rest the boys of her memory. She needed to feel some connection to them now, to sever the still-raw connection to her past.

So with a deep breath she turned the knob, went into her room, and climbed the ladder as quietly as she could.

The attic floor was made of good solid wood, and she knew where to step so that it would not creak. The knothole was where she remembered it, dust swirling about like smoke in the faint shaft of light from the room below. She could hear their voices as she lay down on her belly, and as she put her eye to the knothole everything became clear.

***

They both stood at the window, bathed in the orange-red-gold radiance of sunset. One of them was, anyhow. The dark warrior was still pale and shadowy with only the barest hint of color about him. It was, Kairi reflected, as if the whole chamber had been painted in color, but he remained stubbornly black-and-white in every frame.

 _Not 'he', Riku,_ she reminded herself. She would have to start getting used to it sometime. _And Sora. My boys... my friends._

Would she ever be able to truly call them that again?

They said nothing for several moments, watching the sunset. Sora stood a foot or so behind Riku, watching his companion; Riku's eyes gazed out at what might as well have been another world. But he spoke first, so his mind was clearly in the present.

"I take no pleasure in being right," he said.

Sora sighed, behind him. "Yeah, well. Thanks for not rubbing it in." And then---to Kairi's shock---he stepped closer and wrapped his arms around Riku from behind. "Coming back here wasn't a mistake, though. I promised her I'd return."

"And now the promise is fulfilled. Let's go in the morning."

"You don't want to see your parents? I saw them in the square. I think they recognized you."

"No. They didn't. Why do you think I left them without a second thought, back when it all began? They're probably still mad that I didn't want to become a fisherman or a boatmaker. They never knew me, even then. They don't need to know me now."

Sora sighed into Riku's hair. "I'd forgotten how much you always hated this world. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have made you come here."

"I wanted to come, remember?"

"For me."

She saw Riku shift and fold his arms. "I _did_ give myself over to darkness to save her, once upon a time."

"But you never loved her."

Above them, Kairi caught herself just before she would have gasped.

Riku tilted his face back onto Sora's shoulder. They weren't directly below, so there was little chance of him seeing the hole and her eye, but her heart speeded up just a little anyhow. Then it slowed as saw Riku's face. For the first time since they'd appeared in the square, he wasn't cold or expressionless; he seemed weary instead, though relaxed.

"I was never jealous," he said softly. "I've always been willing to share you with her. Even now. If we had come back here and she _had_ waited..." He shrugged. "As long as certain things were understood, I could have handled anything."

Sora's head bent. She could not see it well from her angle, but their reflections in the glass had sharpened as the sun set, and with that she caught a glimpse of his lips touching Riku's bared throat. Just a simple gesture of affection; to Kairi it spoke volumes.

Against the pale skin he murmured, "One of those certain things being us? Don't worry. I haven't forgotten my promise."

The pain, when it passed across Riku's face, was so fleeting that she almost missed it. It was suppressed almost as quickly as it flared. "But you always planned to return to her."

Sora's head lifted, frowning at Riku in the window's reflection. "...So that's it. I wondered why you were being so weird, before we came here. How long has this been eating at you, Riku?"

"It hasn't been."

"You haven't been able to lie to me successfully since we were kids."

Riku sighed. "Not long."

"And the saga continues."

Riku straightened and turned to face Sora. Kairi could see his face in full now---tightlipped and angry. "Fine. You want the truth? You fell in love with her when we were kids. She fell in love with you. Neither of you had any interest in me despite my every effort. And now here it is, twenty years later, and we're back where we started. After everything you and I have been through, I have to face this again. You think I can't put two and two together?"

Sora let go of him, sighed, and turned to go sit down on the bed. "And your conclusion is...?"

"That you still love her and you always will. I'm just the consolation prize."

Sora slumped, resting his elbows on his knees; he rubbed his eyes with one hand. "Gods of all hearts. I thought we'd resolved this years ago."

"I did too, until I realized that all your training, all your efforts to learn teleportation, were for this. To come back here. To see her."

"I made a promise!"

"You made one to me, too." Then Riku turned away, gazing through the window again. "But it's all right, Sora. I've always known we'd have to deal with this someday. I've always known I came second in your heart. I had to accept that long ago."

"Riku---"

"Deny it."

Sora flinched visibly, but then clenched his fists on his knees. "Deny that she was my first love? I can't. Deny that I love her still? I won't. But things have changed, Riku."

"Sure they have. She gave up on you, and now you can't have her."

"Don't be an ass! Come here."

Riku didn't move. Kairi felt the anger and hurt between them like arrows, flying back and forth. But then Sora stood up and stretched out a hand, palm up. Now it was Riku's turn to flinch, and the anger coming from him turned into something else. Something Kairi could not define.

"What are you afraid of?" Sora asked softly. "You can look the foulest demons of the universe in the eye, but you can't let yourself believe in me? I've never understood that about you."

"Demons are easy to deal with," Riku replied. His voice was so soft that Kairi strained to hear it. "The heart never is."

"It can be, if you're not afraid of the light," Sora replied. The statement clearly had meaning for both of them, Kairi realized, though she puzzled over it herself.

Riku managed a weak smile with only the corner of his mouth. "Maybe I am."

"That's okay. The light is always there. It waits. Gets you when you least expect it." Keeping his hand out, Sora walked forward. Riku tensed and took a step back, but the window gave him no room to run. Sora paused for a moment, waiting until the animal panic faded from Riku's eyes, and then took another step forward.

Riku searched his face, and again Kairi saw that indefinable something hovering in his eyes. "I don't mind that I wasn't the first. It... it doesn't even bother me that I'm not the most important, not really. I told you, I've always been willing to share. But... some things..."

"I'll never leave you again," Sora said. His voice, too, was soft. "I'll never shut you out. That's what I promised when I found you again, after you wandered in darkness for years because I was too stupid to see how you felt. I loved her then and I love her still, Riku, but it's not the same as the way I love you. This is real. Grown-up stuff, not leftover puppy love. You were always first in that."

Riku took a long, shaky breath and finally put out his hand to take Sora's. Sora grinned and yanked him forward, wrapping arms like tree-trunks around him.

"Gotcha."

Riku shifted and looked away, for the first time color coming into his complexion as he blushed. "I wish you'd never grown taller than me. You've been insufferable ever since."

"Payback for all the times you called me a shrimp when we were kids." Sora lifted a hand and stroked Riku's hair back from his face. "Argument over?"

Riku only sighed, but Kairi saw the stiff defensiveness go out of his body and knew that Sora had won. She was the same way, whenever she argued with her husband. Sora saw it too, of course. Lovers learned to read each other that way after a few years.

"She would never have accepted a threesome anyway," Riku said.

"Yeah. I don't think so either. But it's okay, because now neither of us has to share."

When they kissed, Kairi almost decided to get up and leave. She felt dizzy, a little ill, as if something had gone wrong with her inner ear and her balance had been affected. She had sought the truth, and what she found changed everything. How had she ever thought of them as _hers_? They were too intimate; too much history lay between them. She could no longer feel guilty about moving on, for what place could she have ever had in a bond that was already so strong? She would only have come between them again. She could only have been an add-on.

But facing that truth shattered the fairytale that had shaped so much of her life. Had it ever been anything more than a self-centered teenage girl's fantasy? Once upon a time a princess lived in an exotic land with two knights. The first one thought the princess was pretty neat, and the second one flirted with the princess only to get the attention of the first one...

_No. It was love, from both of them. Just... different, back then. Children's love is pure. Adult love never can be._

She looked down into the room again. Sora's mouth was on Riku's collarbone; one of his hands was unfastening Riku's cloak. There was such surrender in the way Riku leaned his head back for him, such tenderness in the way Sora accepted that surrender. She had been blind not to see it the moment they arrived. Two halves of a whole.

_They're beautiful together._

And they were. As Sora dropped Riku's cloak to the floor, he straightened for a moment to tug the sleeveless shirt over Riku's head. Riku raised his arms to permit this---trusting, relaxed, pliant. Nothing like the Riku she had known so long before. But that younger Riku had been alone, in love with Sora and desperately afraid of losing him; she understood that now. That younger Riku had made himself what Sora needed then---a role model, a rival, a "buddy." But _this_ Riku had Sora's love now. This Riku could be what, perhaps, he had always been, under the swagger and ego.

And Sora... Sora had become the man she'd always seen lurking behind his little-boy earnestness and cheeky grin. A more mature version of that same grin was on his lips now as he straightened. "Yum," he said, then dropped to his knees to fiddle with Riku's pants.

Riku watched him, reaching down to stroke his hair with a hand, equally tender. "What is it about arguing that always makes you horny?"

"The fact that you like make-up sex so much."

Kairi could not see Sora clearly; Riku had bent forward slightly, his back obscuring the view. She saw Riku step out of his pants and shoes and underwear at once, kicking them aside; then she saw Riku shiver and bend even further over Sora, his shoulders heaving as his breath quickened. "That's... not true. _You_ like it more than I do."

It was a remnant of the competitiveness she remembered, and privately she smiled to hear it.

Sora made no reply, though he did something that made Riku stiffen all over and groan aloud. "Obnoxious brat," Riku whispered.

After another few moments of whatever he was doing---Kairi had an inkling from the periodic groans and sighs that Riku uttered---Sora sat back on his heels and got to his feet. He took Riku by each hand and pulled him backward toward the bed, gradually moving out of her view. He was grinning. "Stubborn, prickly bastard."

The last thing she saw was Riku rapping his knuckles against Sora's chest-armor. "You gonna stand here and talk, or get down to business?" And then he, too passed beyond the range of the knothole's view. She could see the edge of the bed move as they climbed into it, and then they were gone.

She had seen enough, anyhow. The banter was so much like she remembered, even with the sexual undercurrent, that above the hole Kairi smiled and covered her mouth with a hand, fighting back tears in the same moment. It no longer felt wrong to spy on them. She still loved them in spite of all that had happened; how could she not? They were her two brave knights, and what did it matter that they loved each other more than her? The knothole had become a window through which she could gaze from memory into the present. She could look down at them now, her friends, her boys, and see that they had grown up all right. After so many years, after so much uncertainty... they were fine. Better than fine. Happy. The knowledge drove away all her guilt and despair, and filled her with joy.

It seemed only right to stay while they made love. She drew up her knees and rested her cheek on them, listening to the sounds from below: a heavy series of thunks as Sora's armor and clothing dropped to the floor, then the creak of the bed, then the very soft sounds of caresses and the unintelligible murmurs of love. When the creaks became rhythmic, she leaned her cheek on one knee and closed her eyes, enjoying their pleasure vicariously, imagining what could have been. Could she have ever made Riku whimper like that, his voice weak and throaty with emotions he'd never revealed as a child? Would Sora have ever whispered to her as he did now--- _Shhh it's okay let go trust me you know I'll never hurt you_ and _Is this good yeah you like that don't you I love it when you look at me that way?_ Could she have ever brought herself to share her heart, much less her body, with both of them at once? Could she have loved them enough to make it work?

 _Yes,_ she thought, and instead of regret she felt relief.

It was as if they heard her, below. Riku climaxed first, gritting out Sora's name from between clenched teeth; she heard Sora chuckle and then groan himself, his voice peaking and breaking and for just an instant sounding like that of the boy he'd once been. Then the moment passed and the creaking stopped and only the sound of their sighs filtered up through the hole.

She used the moment to get up and creep back to the ladder, where she climbed down and closed the attic door behind her. Then she lay down on her bed and closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself. She fell asleep that way---peacefully, contentedly, for the first time in twenty long years.

***

In the morning Kairi got up early, worried that they would leave without saying goodbye. She made breakfast, put it on a tray, and carried it up to their room. Once upon a time a princess had two knights who'd never cared if she walked in on them; now they started awake and scrambled to pull sheets over their nakedness and stared at her in consternation as she came over to the bed and sat down.

She smiled and set the tray on a relatively flat area of the rumpled sheets. "Teleporting between worlds takes a lot out of you," she said, patting Sora's bare knee and grinning that it was hairy. He jerked and made a strangled sound, his face beet-red. "I wanted you to have one good meal before you left."

This time it was Riku who spoke, since Sora seemed to have choked on pure embarassment. "You're cheerful---and surprisingly unsurprised---this morning."

She smiled at him, pleased to see that the sullen annoyance faded from his eyes when she did. "My two best friends in the whole universe have come for a visit. Why wouldn't I be cheerful?"

Riku's eyes narrowed, searching her face carefully. She recognized that peculiar expression of his now. It was hope---the kind of wistful, boyish hope that most men lost by the end of their teens. For a moment she was surprised to recognize it in Riku, but then she remembered what Sora had said the evening before. _I just help him out once in a while._ Not with a sword or magic, then, but with the kind of love that could give a man hope even in the depths of darkness.

She reached over and put her hand on Riku's, and saw the hope flare into surprise. "I'm not going to say I should've waited for you. Life isn't meant to stand still. You both moved on too, and I'm glad to see it. But nothing's changed, don't you see? You both still love me, and I still love you. That will never change."

Riku stared at her, but a smile began to soften the hard line of his mouth and the sharp glitter of his eyes. That was when she saw that Sora had been right. He _was_ the same Riku she had always known, as Sora was the same Sora, and as she was the same Kairi. She saw this understanding in his eyes, and rejoiced that he was her friend once more.

Sora, who had recovered his voice but said nothing, glanced from one to the other, frowning a bit in growing confusion. "Er... is there something I'm missing, here?"

She covered her mouth to giggle, and Riku rolled his eyes and hooked an arm around his neck to rub knuckles into his hair, and Sora yelped and struggled to get free and inadvertently flashed Kairi with all his goods, and in the laughter that followed it was like old times all over again.

 _No,_ she thought as Sora scrambled for his pants and cursed, and Riku made fun of his hairy ass. _Like new times. Like now. Like always._

***

They stood in the square like young gods, facing each other, dark and light mirrors. But they looked up at her as they raised their hands and summoned their power. She smiled and waved goodbye, lifting her daughter so that she could wave too; at her side her husband did the same. The two warriors smiled back, touched palms, and vanished in a flash of thunder and lightning.

But they would be back, she knew. Because brave knights always returned to the princess they loved, and that princess would always welcome them home.

Because that was the way fairytales were supposed to end.


End file.
